BROKEN COLLEGE PROMISES: AN EXPLORATION OF TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY SCHOLARS PROMISE SCHOLARSHIP LOSS

Abstract

As public concerns have grown over issues of college affordability, the student debt crisis, racial and educational justice, and large disparities between college outcomes for low-income and racially minoritized groups, hundreds of college promise programs (CPPs) have emerged at the local and state levels over the last twenty years to address college affordability and educational disparities. While CPP research aims to address the structural inequities that are situated within disadvantaged communities, evaluations of CPP program designs often do not explore how these scholarship designs and renewal requirements may be mismatched to the populations they target, thus creating sub-optimal outcomes for their programs.

This dissertation uses a critical qualitative inquiry approach to explore students’ experiences within an early-awareness state-based college promise program, Indiana’s Twenty-First Century Scholars (TFCS) program, which promises its recipients up to four years of full tuition scholarship at any Indiana public college or university. Using interview data from sixteen TFCS students at Indiana University’s regional campuses who lost the 21st Century Scholarship (21C) before college graduation, this study explored themes related to these TFCS students understanding and experiences with the scholarship renewal requirements (30 credit hour requirement, Standard Academic Progress (SAP), the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), Annual Means Requirement). It also explored what personal, circumstantial, institutional and societal factors contributed to these students with meeting the 21C renewal requirements, and their experiences and decisions related to college after losing the 21C scholarship.

This study found that students had a very limited understanding of the scholarship requirements and thus felt betrayed when they discovered they had lost their scholarships. Additionally, this study found that students identified a variety of challenges that contributed to their struggles with meeting the scholarship’s rigorous requirements, including academic challenges, mental health challenges, family issues, basic needs insecurities, issues with campus support staff, and full-time employment. Finally, this study found that scholarship loss had a disproportionate effect on poor and working-class TFCS students and their choices related to college, both in deciding whether to stay in college the semester immediately after scholarship loss and in their overall college timeline.